Pali
Pronunciation	[paːli]
Spoken in	Cambodia, Bangladesh, India, Laos, Burma, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand
Extinct	No native speakers, used as a literary and liturgical language only
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Pali
Writing system	Brāhmī and derived scripts and Latin alphabet (refer to article)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	pi
ISO 639-2	pli
ISO 639-3	pli
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Plate 10 from C. Faulmann: Illustrirte Geschichte der Schrift (1880). The upper half shows a text in Sanskrit (praise of Vishnu), written in Devanagari. For the script, while the lower half shows a text in Pali from a Buddhist ceremonial scripture called "Kammuwa" from Burma (probably in old Mon script). pp.485f. of that book.

Pāli (also Pāḷi) is a Middle Indo-Aryan language (of Prakrit group) of the Indian subcontinent. It is best known as the language of many of the earliest extant Buddhist scriptures, as collected in the Pāḷi Canon or Tipitaka, and as the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism.

Origin and development[link]

Etymology of the name[link]

The word Pali itself signifies "line" or "(canonical) text". This name for the language seems to have its origins in commentarial traditions, wherein the Pali (in the sense of the line of original text quoted) was distinguished from the commentary or vernacular translation that followed it in the manuscript. As such, the name of the language has caused some debate among scholars of all ages; the spelling of the name also varies, being found with both long "ā" [ɑː] and short "a" [a], and also with either a retroflex [ɭ] or non-retroflex [l] "l" sound. Both the long ā and retroflex ḷ are seen in the ISO 15919/ALA-LC rendering, Pāḷi; however, to this day there is no single, standard spelling of the term, and all four possible spellings can be found in textbooks. R.C. Childers translates the word as "series" and states that the language "bears the epithet in consequence of the perfection of its grammatical structure".^[1]

Classification[link]

Pali is a literary language of the Prakrit language family. When the canonical texts were written down in Sri Lanka in the first century BCE, Pali stood close to a living language; this is not the case for the commentaries.^[2] Despite excellent scholarship on this problem, there is persistent confusion as to the relation of Pāḷi to the vernacular spoken in the ancient kingdom of Magadha, which was located around modern-day Bihār.

Pali, as a Middle Indo-Aryan language, is different from Sanskrit, not only with regard to the time of its origin but as to its dialectal base since a number of its morphological and lexical features betray the fact that it is not a direct continuation of Ṛgvedic Vedic Sanskrit; rather it descends from a dialect or number of dialects that were, despite many similarities, different from Ṛgvedic.^[3]

Early history[link]

In Theravada Buddhism[link]

Many Theravada sources refer to the Pali language as "Magadhan" or the "language of Magadha". This identification first appears in the commentaries, and may have been an attempt by Buddhists to associate themselves more closely with the Mauryans. The Buddha taught in Magadha, but the four most important places in his life are all outside of it. It is likely that he taught in several closely related dialects of Middle Indo-Aryan, which had a very high degree of mutual intelligibility. There is no attested dialect of Middle Indo-Aryan with all the features of Pali. Pali has some commonalities with both the Ashokan inscriptions at Girnar in the West of India, and at Hathigumpha, Bhubaneswar, Orissa in the East. Similarities to the Western inscription may be misleading, because the inscription suggests that the Ashokan scribe may not have translated the material he received from Magadha into the vernacular of the people there. Whatever the relationship of the Buddha's speech to Pali, the Canon was eventually transcribed and preserved entirely in it, while the commentarial tradition that accompanied it (according to the information provided by Buddhaghosa) was translated into Sinhalese and preserved in local languages for several generations.

In Sri Lanka, Pali is thought to have entered into a period of decline ending around the 4th or 5th century (as Sanskrit rose in prominence, and simultaneously, as Buddhism's adherents became a smaller portion of the subcontinent), but ultimately survived. The work of Buddhaghosa was largely responsible for its reemergence as an important scholarly language in Buddhist thought. The Visuddhimagga and the other commentaries that Buddhaghosa compiled codified and condensed the Sinhalese commentarial tradition that had been preserved and expanded in Sri Lanka since the 3rd century BCE.

Early western views[link]

T.W. Rhys Davids in his book Buddhist India,^[4] and Wilhelm Geiger in his book Pali Literature and Language, suggested that Pali may have originated as a form of lingua franca or common language of culture among people who used differing dialects in North India, used at the time of the Buddha and employed by him. Another scholar states that at that time it was "a refined and elegant vernacular of all Aryan-speaking people."^[5] Modern scholarship has not arrived at a consensus on the issue; there are a variety of conflicting theories with supporters and detractors.^[6] After the death of the Buddha, Pali may have evolved among Buddhists out of the language of the Buddha as a new artificial language.^[7] R.C. Childers, who held to the theory that Pali was Old Magadhi, wrote: "Had Gautama never preached, it is unlikely that Magadhese would have been distinguished from the many other vernaculars of Hindustan, except perhaps by an inherent grace and strength which make it a sort of Tuscan among the Prakrits."^[8]

According to K.R. Norman, it is likely that the viharas in North India had separate collections of material, preserved in the local dialect. In the early period it is likely that no degree of translation was necessary in communicating this material to other areas. Around the time of Ashoka there had been more linguistic divergence, and an attempt was made to assemble all the material. It is possible that a language quite close to the Pali of the canon emerged as a result of this process as a compromise of the various dialects in which the earliest material had been preserved, and this language functioned as a lingua franca among Eastern Buddhists in India from then on. Following this period, the language underwent a small degree of Sanskritisation (i.e., MIA bamhana -> brahmana, tta -> tva in some cases).^[9]

Modern scholarship[link]

Bhikkhu Bodhi, summarizing the current state of scholarship, states that the language is "closely related to the language (or, more likely, the various regional dialects) that the Buddha himself spoke." He goes on to write:

Scholars regard this language as a hybrid showing features of several Prakrit dialects used around the third century BCE, subjected to a partial process of Sanskritization. While the language is not identical with any the Buddha himself would have spoken, it belongs to the same broad linguistic family as those he might have used and originates from the same conceptual matrix. This language thus reflects the thought-world that the Buddha inherited from the wider Indian culture into which he was born, so that its words capture the subtle nuances of that thought-world.^[10]

According to A.K. Warder, the Pali language is a Prakrit language used in a region of western India.^[11] Warder associates Pali with the Indian realm (janapada) of Avanti, where the Sthavira sect was centered.^[12] Following the initial split in the Buddhist community, the Sthavira branch of Buddhism became influential in western and southern India, while the Mahāsāṃghika branch became influential in central and eastern India.^[13] Akira Hirakawa and Paul Groner also associate Pali with west India and the Sthavira sect, citing inscriptions at Girnar in Gujarat, India, which are linguistically closest to the Pali language.^[14]

Pali today[link]

Today Pali is studied mainly to gain access to Buddhist scriptures, and is frequently chanted in a ritual context. The secular literature of Pali historical chronicles, medical texts, and inscriptions is also of great historical importance. The great centers of Pali learning remain in the Theravada nations of Southeast Asia: Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. Since the 19th century, various societies for the revival of Pali studies in India have promoted awareness of the language and its literature, perhaps most notably the Maha Bodhi Society founded by Anagarika Dhammapala.

In Europe, the Pali Text Society has been a major force in promoting the study of Pali by Western scholars since its founding in 1881. Based in the United Kingdom, the society publishes romanized Pali editions, along with many English translations of these sources. In 1869, the first Pali Dictionary was published using the research of Robert Caesar Childers, one of the founding members of the Pali Text Society. It was the first Pali translated text in English and was published in 1872. Childers's dictionary later received the Volney Prize in 1876.

The Pali Text Society was in part founded to compensate for the very low level of funds allocated to Indology in late 19th-century England and the rest of the UK; incongruously, the citizens of the UK were not nearly so robust in Sanskrit and Prakrit language studies as Germany, Russia, and even Denmark. Without the inspiration of colonial holdings such as the former British occupation of Sri Lanka and Burma, institutions such as the Danish Royal Library have built up major collections of Pali manuscripts, and major traditions of Pali studies.

Lexicon[link]

Virtually every word in Pāḷi has cognates in the other Prakritic Middle Indo-Aryan languages, e.g., the Jain Prakrits. The relationship to earlier Sanskrit (e.g., Vedic language) is less direct and more complicated. Historically, influence between Pali and Sanskrit has been felt in both directions. The Pali language's resemblance to Sanskrit is often exaggerated by comparing it to later Sanskrit compositions – which were written centuries after Sanskrit ceased to be a living language, and are influenced by developments in Middle Indic, including the direct borrowing of a portion of the Middle Indic lexicon; whereas, a good deal of later Pali technical terminology has been borrowed from the vocabulary of equivalent disciplines in Sanskrit, either directly or with certain phonological adaptations.

Post-canonical Pali also possesses a few loan-words from local languages where Pali was used (e.g. Sri Lankans adding Sinhalese words to Pali). These usages differentiate the Pali found in the Suttapiṭaka from later compositions such as the Pali commentaries on the canon and folklore (e.g., the stories of the Jātaka commentaries), and comparative study (and dating) of texts on the basis of such loan-words is now a specialized field unto itself.

Pali was not exclusively used to convey the teachings of the Buddha, as can be deduced from the existence of a number of secular texts, such as books of medical science/instruction, in Pali. However, scholarly interest in the language has been focused upon religious and philosophical literature, because of the unique window it opens on one phase in the development of Buddhism.

Emic views of Pali[link]

Although Sanskrit was said in the Brahmanical tradition to be the unchanging language spoken by the gods, in which each word had an inherent significance, this view of language was not shared in the early Buddhist tradition,^[which?] in which words were only conventional and mutable signs.^[15] Neither the Buddha nor his early followers shared the Hindus reverence for the Vedic language or its sacred texts. This view of language naturally extended to Pali, and may have contributed to its usage (as an approximation or standardization of local Middle Indic dialects) in place of Sanskrit. However, by the time of the compilation of the Pali commentaries (4th or 5th century), Pali was regarded as the natural language, the root language of all beings.^[16][who?]

Comparable to Ancient Egyptian, Latin or Hebrew in the mystic traditions of the West, Pali recitations were often thought to have a supernatural power (which could be attributed to their meaning, the character of the reciter, or the qualities of the language itself), and in the early strata of Buddhist literature we can already see Pali dhāraṇīs used as charms, e.g. against the bite of snakes. Many people in Theravada cultures still believe that taking a vow in Pali has a special significance, and, as one example of the supernatural power assigned to chanting in the language, the recitation of the vows of Aṅgulimāla are believed to alleviate the pain of childbirth in Sri Lanka. In Thailand, the chanting of a portion of the Abhidhammapiṭaka is believed to be beneficial to the recently departed, and this ceremony routinely occupies as much as seven working days. Interestingly, there is nothing in the latter text that relates to this subject, and the origins of the custom are unclear.

Phonology[link]

With regard to its phonology, R. C. Childers compared Pali to Italian: "Like Italian, Pali is at once flowing and sonorous: it is a characteristic of both languages that nearly every word ends in a vowel, and that all harsh conjunctions are softened down by assimilation, elision, or crasis, while on the other hand both lend themselves easily to the expression of sublime and vigorous thought."^[17]

Vowels[link]

Long and short vowels are only contrastive in open syllables; in closed syllables, all vowels are always short. Short and long e and o are in complementary distribution: the short variants occur only in closed syllables, the long variants occur only in open syllables. Short and long e and o are therefore not distinct phonemes.

A sound called anusvāra (Skt.; Pali: nigghahita), represented by the letter ṁ (ISO 15919) or ṃ (ALA-LC) in romanization, and by a raised dot in most traditional alphabets, originally marked the fact that the preceding vowel was nasalized. That is, aṁ, iṁ and uṁ represented [ã], [ĩ] and [ũ]. In many traditional pronunciations, however, the anusvāra is pronounced more strongly, like the velar nasal [ŋ], so that these sounds are pronounced instead [ãŋ], [ĩŋ] and [ũŋ]. However pronounced, ṁ never follows a long vowel; ā, ī and ū are converted to the corresponding short vowels when ṁ is added to a stem ending in a long vowel, e.g. kathā + ṁ becomes kathaṁ, not *kathāṁ, devī + ṁ becomes deviṁ, not *devīṁ.

Consonants[link]